A great year for jazz concerts and albums was offset by loss of San Diego sax icon James Moody

When it came to jazz concerts in San Diego, 2010 offered a host of memorable moments, most notably saxophonist Donny McCaslin's stunning performance at the La Jolla Athenaeum, young guitar phenom Julian Lage's impressive debut at the Loft@UCSD and a good portion of the Ocean Beach Music & Arts Festival. (See below for a list of 10 favorite albums and area jazz concerts.)

Alas, locally and nationally, one of the biggest stories in jazz in 2010 was also one of the saddest. Saxophone legend James Moody, a shining star of the music world for nearly 60 years and a resident here since 1989, died Dec. 9 after a 10-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

Best known for his global hit “Moody’s Mood for Love,” which longtime friend Bill Cosby hailed as “a national anthem,” Moody kept performing until early this year and earned his latest Grammy Award nomination one just week before his death. Even after his illness caused him to reluctantly cancel concert dates, including an all-star 85th birthday concert in his honor at Carnegie Hall, he diligently continued to practice and work on his music at home.

During a late fall visit to the San Carlos home he shared with his devoted wife of 21 years, Linda, I watched in awe as Moody picked up his tenor sax and deftly played the fleet opening lines of Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee,” followed by finely burnished quotes from the Thelonious Monk songbook.

While he no longer could play with the same majestic power as before, Moody cleanly and gracefully articulated every note, injecting each with his exquisite tone, only softer. He then moved to his piano and explored a knotty chord sequence, alternately frowning and smiling as he sought fresh ways to voice the music that was his life’s work.

Moody could have easily rested on his formidable laurels decades ago, but he never did. His quest to always learn and discover more was an inspiration during his long, perpetually active life, and it remains so now.

“If you’re practicing something you’ve played before, you’re not practicing. You have to play something new,” he told me in 2005, during an interview conducted shortly before his 80th birthday. “You’ll never get it all, but you keep trying.”

Moody's Dec. 19 memorial service and subsequent Celebration of Life drew an array of national jazz stars from San Diego and across the nation, as well as fans from here and as far away as Europe. His music, and his indomitable spirit, will surely endure.

On the concert front, despite our battered economy, it was a rich year for live jazz in San Diego. For the first time in recent memory, fans here could increasingly choose between attending two major jazz gigs on the same night, be it Pat Metheny going up against the Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour all star band, guitarists Bill Frisell and Anthony Wilson, or Charlie Hunter and Stanton Moore. Welcome, San Diego, to bona fide big-city options.

The La Jolla Athenaeum’s 21-year-old jazz series this year presented 16 memorable concerts in three area venues, each astutely booked by Daniel Atkinson. Nationally acclaimed San Diego flutist Holly Hofmann and the Lyric Opera concluded the second year of their jointly produced Jazz in North Park series at Birch North Park Theatre, the same venue that hosted the La Jolla Music Society’s muy caliente Latin-jazz series.